Many organizations rely upon data replication to improve the reliability, fault-tolerance, and/or accessibility of their applications and/or data. Data replication typically involves replicating data from a primary site or device (e.g., a production volume) to a secondary (e.g., backup and/or disaster recovery) site or device.
Many traditional replication systems may replicate data at the volume level (e.g., replicate a specified volume from a primary site to a secondary site). However, in some cases a replication administrator may wish to only replicate certain files within a volume (e.g., selected virtual hard disk files within a virtualization environment). While some traditional replication systems may replicate data at the file level, these replication systems may lack features, robustness, performance, quality of service, and/or ease of use of existing volume-level replication systems. Unfortunately, replication administrators who would prefer to perform file-specific replication may therefore face an undesirable dilemma of choosing between a powerful and robust volume-level replication system and a file-level replication system. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for file-level replication.